No matter what the route in is (telephone, eConsult), you have to inform patients how long it will take to respond to develop trust in the triage system. It would depend from practice to practice on what they decide collectively. For example, some practices decide
that eConsult will be actioned on the same day if submitted before 17:30 and all phone calls will be actioned on the same day.
The idea is for practices to aim to ‘do the work of the day on the same day’ and for clinicians to complete the work arising from the consultation e.g. referral, advice and guidance, letter or test request, at the same time rather than building up tasks for action later.
